The Young Danish String Quartet CARL NIELSEN String Quartets Vol. 2

This admirable coupling by the Young Danish String Quartet of Carl Nielsen's string quartets in F minor and E flat major bolsters the notion that Danish performers are still best suited to represent Nielsen's uniquely Danish compositional voice. Both works here are youthful compositions written in a style fusing those of Grieg and Brahms. The Young Danish String Quartet rips into the big theme of the F minor quartet's opening Allegro non troppo ma energico with rhythmic power yet still express the following Un poco adagio's warm heart with yearning lines and lushly balanced sonorities. With lucidly articulated lines and effervescently buoyant rhythms, the young Danish players' interpretation of the E flat quartet's unique combination of a pastoral tone with learned counterpoint is wonderfully poised between the natural and the intellectual. If your shelf can hold only one disc of Nielsen's F minor and E flat major quartets, this disc will securely fill the spot. Dacapo's super audio digital sound is all enveloping with the four players of the quartet sitting comfortably around the listener in an otherwise empty hall. (James Leonard)

The Young Danish String Quartet / Tim Frederiksen CARL NIELSEN String Quartets Vol. 1

I’m not sure what the members of the Danish Quartet, who recorded the Nielsen quartets more than effectively in 1992 (Kontrapunkt, 10/93), think about a “young” incarnation appearing 15 years later. But I hope they would doff their caps in admiration, because these new recordings are top-notch, and I’m happy to echo and endorse the enthusiasm they have already generated in Denmark.

The benchmark recording has been that of the Kontra Quartet, sympathetic interpretations of works which do not enshrine the absolute finest of Nielsen, for all that he was an orchestral violinist and an experienced and enthusiastic performer of string quartets. But the new Quartet, all in their early twenties, bring a freshness and energy plus a level of sheer accomplishment that I don’t ever remember hearing in these works. Far from defensiveness or special pleading, they simply assume that they are playing high quality music and that their job is therefore to give it their all. The results are joyous, effervescent.
The First Quartet is the most striking beneficiary, since it can too easily sound texturally over-written and structurally effortful, as in the finale’s contrived “Résumé”. Such reservations are hard to entertain while listening to this thoroughly infectious account. Nielsen asks for energy in the first movement, and that is what the Young Danish Quartet give him, along with large-scale sweep and mellifluous tone throughout. The Fourth Quartet, a tough-minded cousin to the comic opera Maskarade, is interpretatively more challenging, and the Young Danish Quartet may in future find more subtly shaded routes through it; in the meantime their expressive candour and passion are entirely to the good. They are joined in the Quintet by Tim Frederiksen, under whom they studied at the Royal Conservatory in Copenhagen, and without quite transmuting base metal into gold, they display the various facets of what was a breakthrough piece for the young Nielsen to their best advantage. (David Fanning / Gramophone)